In the original dustsheet. Black cloth binding with gilt title on the spine.

• F.B.A. provides an in-depth photographic presentation of this item to stimulate your feeling and touch. More traditional book descriptions are immediately available.

London, 1852: the world’s capital city of crime; a city where murder and hangings are public entertainment, where reporters and balladeers vie with one another to be first to the next grisly, exclusive revelation. Among the panoply of killers awaiting execution is Chokee Bill, whose stranglings have set the capital abuzz. One of the balladeers, Henry Owler, is determined to extract a true confession from the killer. However, Chokee Bill claims he is innocent and that the real Fiend is still on the loose. Owler enlists the help of one of London’s leading investigative journalists, Edmund Whitty of the Falcon, to help him to discover the real murderer before he strikes again. But fate has some other twists in store. The killer is closer than either one expects, close enough to touch in the fog bound streets. Is he a wraith of the imagination? Or is he the nightmare the public have dreamed and now made all too real? Is he The Fiend in Human Form?

Reviews:

• I confess,I found this slow to start,but I persisted,because it was well written,and it soon gripped me to the point where I couldn’t wait to find out what happened next.It’s full of great period detail,but does not belabour it,and manages to render the language authentically and in an easily understandable style.Whitty,the central protaganist, hero seems a little too much,is an engaging character;venal,proud,a drunkard,a drug addict,a liar and,perhaps worst of all,a journalist,and yet a man with morals and compassion.Broke and unpopular,he needs a big story and becomes embroiled in the hunt for a serial killer who is strangling prostitutes There a several writers in this genre now, (Nineteenth century Noir?) but Gray is one of the best of them.He’s managed to take a very old tale and, by putting his crusading journalist in the London of 1852,a place many of its current inhabitants would recognise,give it enough of a twist to tell it well. It makes for a thoroughly enjoyable read,even though you might well guess the identity of the killer some way before the final page.Gray has already written 2 more novels featuring Whitty and I look forward to reading them.

• At first I was under the impression I wouldn’t really enjoy this novel, not that it was badly written- it was indeed the opposite- or that it wasn’t interesting -it was- or that it wasn’t atmospheric- seedy London from the 1850s really breathed on the page- rather it was precisely because the author concentrated all his powers on a description of a very seedy London and as a reader I have a great weakness, I like to like, to feel connected to the characters.With this book I felt distaste towards all of them, at least at the beginning, and I thought that would be it as far as I was concerned, through no fault of the novelist. But the more I read, the better I appreciated the skills with which the narrative unfolded and I was gripped despite a certain reticence and drawn into the lives of the characters. And by the time I finished I had to admit that it had been a good read indeed.

John MacLachlan Gray, OC (born John Howard Gray; 26 September 1946) is a Canadian writer-composer-performer for stage, TV, film, radio and print. He is best known for his stage musicals and for his two seasons as a satirist on CBC TV’s The Journal, as well as an author, speaker and social critic on cultural-political issues. Born in Ottawa, Ontario, and raised in Nova Scotia, Gray obtained a B.A. at Mount Allison University, and an M.A. at the University of British Columbia. While attending the latter, he founded Tamahnous Theatre, and served as its director from 1971 to 1974. He then joined Theatre Passe Muraille in Toronto, Ontario, where he began writing and composing for the stage. His first musical was “18 Wheels,” about truck drivers. Around that time he abandoned the theatre in favour of the novel – in a series of thrillers set in post-modern Vancouver, mid-19th century England and the United States before the Civil War. As with Billy Bishop Goes to War, Gray casts an ironic contemporary eye on imagined historical events. He is the recipient of a Golden Globe, and the Governor General’s Medal. In 2000, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada for “his contribution to Canada’s cultural landscape”. He holds honorary doctorates from Dalhousie University and Mount Allison University.

John Gray lives in Vancouver, British Columbia with his wife Beverlee. They have two sons, Zachary (a musician and actor) and Ezra ( a visual artist).